In the present book I deal with the fault of literalness commited by Polish translators of the Old Testament. I confined the scope of investigation to translations published in XX century. I defined literalness as an only partial translation of linguistic signs (chapter I). Literalness precludes achieving dynamic equivalence (the notion introduced by E. A. Nida) in translation. This is so in following cases: 1. The original is understandable, but the translation is not. Examples: Ps 37: 18 means 'The Lord takes care of those who are innocent', and literal translation in Biblia Tysiąclecia (4. edition from 1990) is unintelligible (Pan zna dni nienagannych 'the Lord knows the days of innocents'). Ps 119: 1 means 'Happy are those who live according to the laws of the Lord', and literal translation by Czesław Miłosz (edition from 1982) is unintelligible (Błogosławieni [...] którzy chodzą w zakonie Pańskm 'Blessed are those [...] who walk in the law of the Lord'). 2. The translation has different meaning than the original. Examples: Ps 34: 19 means 'The Lord takes care of those who are in desparation' and the literal translation in Biblia Poznańska (edition from 1991-92) means 'The Lord takes care of those who are lovelorn'. The reason is that Polish conventional metaphor serce złamane (literally 'broken heart') means 'lovelorn'. The expression leb hå'eben (Ez 11: 19) means 'stubbornness' and its literal translation (serce kamienne 'the heart of stone') in the Bible translated by bishop K. Romaniuk (published in 1998) means in Polish 'cruelty, lack of human feelings'. Ps 32: 1b means 'those whose sin is forgiven', and its literal translation by bishop Romaniuk means 'someone whose sin nobody knows about'. 3. The translation in not stylistically equivalent. Examples: Gen 45: 10 (’attå ubånekå ubne bånekå wconkå ubqårkå) is stylistically neutral and the literal translation (so called Nowy Przekład from 1985) seems to Polish reader to be rhetorical device because of repetition of possesive pronoun and conjunction (ty wraz z synami twoimi i wnukami twoimi, i trzodami twoimi, i bydłem twoim 'you with your sons and your grandsons, and your flock, and your cattle'). Such repetitions are usually avoided in Polish texts. Examples of literalness analysed in the present book are grouped according to the affected segment of the text: 1. Chapter II: translation of polysemic lexemes which conveys the meaning given lexeme assumes in other contexts, but not in the translated one: the lexeme ben can be rendered in many contexts as syn 'son' (eg. Gen 21: 2) but in Gen 36: 25 the lexeme ben has wider meaning 'child, descendant' and the literal translation provided by rev. S. Łach (A oto synowie Any: Dison i Oholibama, córka Any 'These are sons of Ana: Dison and Oholibama, the daughter of Ana') contains nonsense: the girl was somebody's son. 2. Chapter III: translation of idioms which conveys the meaning given expression would have had if it were not an idiom. The expression `aral leb means 'stupid, stubborn'. In Ez 44: 9 this expression is rendered by bishop Romaniuk into o nie obrzezanym sercu 'uncircumcised in heart'. It is for Polish reader unintelligible, strange and even shocking in sacred text. Original expression is easily understandable for it is conventional and it is fully acceptable in this pragmatic context (cf. Ex 6:12). 3. Chapter IV: literalness connected with the textgrammar, mainly with coherence of a text. For example in the Hebrew text the beginning of the paragraph is often marked by repetition of proper names which is not necessary for identification or characteristics of participants. Such repetitions in literal translation make Polish text rather long-winded (eg. Gen 23: 1-2, literal translation in so called Nowy Przekład: A Sara żyła sto dwadzieścia siedem lat; tyle było lat życia Sary. Sara umarła 'Sarah lived 127 years, these were the years of the life of Sarah. Sarah died'). Literalness connected with types of the text (genre) consists in transferring some structural features of text type used in original in spite of the fact that its functional equivalent in target language has different structural features. For example the text type used in Gen 36, 31-39 can be labelled as "listing in chronological order". This genre has in the original the pattern wajjimlok tahtåw x1 wajjåmåt x1 wajjimlok tahtåw x2 wajjåmåt x2 and so on. Some translators had preserved this pattern in the translation (Biblia Tysiąclecia), what makes it stylistically very marked, even odd, and does not function in the same way as the pattern in the original, because the original pattern is a sign communicating 'this is the list in chronological order'. I have provided my own translation of all analysed texts, and translating Biblical verses I aimed not only at semantic and pragmatic equivalence, but also at stylistic one. For example translating Job 13, 14 I noted that the author used here very typical poetic device: he put together an idiom (wnafši 'åsim bkappi 'I risk my life', lit. 'I put my life in my hand') and a poetic (not conventional) metaphor (’esså bsåri bšinnåj 'I take my flesh in my teeth'). The reader will surely notice the parallelism of literal meanings and he will assume on this base that also metaphorical meanings must be similar, so the poetic metaphor must mean 'I risk my life'. The reader also will notice that the idiom is "etymologically" a metaphor. In my translation I tried to reconstruct the efect by using Polish lexicon, i.e. by putting together two idioms which are supposedly based on the same metaphor (Igram ze śmiercią i zaglądam jej w oczy). The results of my research are following: The Old Testament is still translated into Polish literally. There are many modern Polish translations of the Old Testament but they are very similar to one another in respect of literalness.